Indigenous Knowledge: Scaling the Impact of Archeological Research Up, Out, and Across

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) or Indigenous Knowledge (IK)—evolved and evolving from hundreds or thousands of years of observation and interaction with specific environments—has answered questions posed by geomorphologists and archaeologists, among others, attempting to identify architectural remnants. In the 1990s, Hul’q’umi’num’ and W̱SÁNEĆ Coast Salish communities aided Parks Canada and scientists investigating hundreds of stone walls along British Columbia’s coast. The resulting study and revival of Coast Salish clam gardens and the creation of the Clam Garden Network exemplify the ways in which IK not only bridges gaps in archaeological research, but scales and diversifies the significance of that research into issues of cultural sovereignty, sustainability, and biodiversity. In the United States, continued labors to understand, revive, and advance clam garden IK for present-day purposes stand alongside projects such as the joint venture of Iñupiaq experts and Fish & Wildlife Service personnel in researching weirs constructed for whitefish harvesting in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska. Each example demonstrates that IK is not simply an alternative framework for understanding the past, but an epistemological alternative to (western) frameworks and disciplines that have created silos of expertise at odds with complex problem-solving.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38198.0